For many, I think the arguments are just a formality. It’s a bunch of rationalizations they can use to emotionally reinforce their beliefs rather than prove them intellectually. Once the belief takes hold and they are emotionally invested, the rationalizations (as opposed to reasoning and logic) are secondary.

They start working backwards – first comes the belief, then comes the “reasoning” that confirms it. You and I are more likely to see things the other way around. But once the belief becomes more important than the line of reasoning behind it, dispelling their misconceptions doesn’t do anything except make them feel uncomfortable. That’s because they’ll still cling to the belief you’ve just disproved, but feel exposed because they can’t give you a good reason for continuing to believe it is true. They don’t want to admit that their belief has no basis in reason or that it makes no sense. If you press them on this, they’ll likely retreat. Some may even avoid the subject of religion in the future because they don’t want to be confronted with this again.

For example:

“President Bush is the greatest President ever because we haven’t had any terrorist attacks since 9/11!”

But if someone shoots down your argument by pointing out that your argument is flawed in some way, the argument is defeated because the argument isn’t logically true. (I’m talking about principles of debate and stuff like that here.)

For example:

“Actually, there isn’t any evidence that a second terrorist attack was ever attempted. So it seems more likely that we haven’t been attacked again because no one has tried. We have no reason to assume that the administration actually stopped any new attacks since 9/11. Also, there are a lot of other ways to measure the greatness of a President. So lack of terrorist attacks proves nothing about the ‘greatness’ of this one. Sorry, bro.”

So you now realize that your argument isn’t true because someone explained this to you. You may still think that President Bush is the greatest President, but you now know this particular argument doesn’t work. So it would be dishonest to keep using that argument to convince others that you are right despite the fact that you know the argument is flawed. If you do this, you are probably hoping that the person you’re trying to convince won’t spot the flaw in your reasoning. Which is dishonest, as I said earlier.

You are basically hoping to trick someone into believing your opinion is the correct one because you can’t come up with anything better.

Unfortunately, Jehovah’s Witnesses and many others seem to make this mistake. Some of it is just laziness. “Well, 4 out of every 5 people I meet seem to agree with my flawed argument. So I’ll keep trying it even though some people know better because it still convinces everyone else that I’m right. And convincing them that I’m right is what matters, after all.”

No, that’s not all that matters. You should only use arguments that work to convince others of your point of view. If you have to use tricks, then maybe that’s because your belief is wrong to begin with. At least logically speaking.

Sorry if this doesn’t make sense. I’m not sure how else to explain it. (?)